


liminal spaces

by SkadizzleRoss



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angry Immortal Fam, Angst with a Happy Ending, Booker Fell Asleep In a Gutter and Woke Up To a Bad Time, Copley Doing His Dryly Amused Best, Cults, Drowning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:19:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27341854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkadizzleRoss/pseuds/SkadizzleRoss
Summary: (Canon-divergent AU). In his hunt for Andy's flock, James Copley stumbles across a wayward immortal that wandered into the hands of a cult. Booker wakes from a century of purgatory to a strange new world.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/James Copley
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	liminal spaces

He dreamed of it for years and years.

Of that dark water heavy on his tongue, burning in his lungs.

He dreamed and dreamed and at last—

Woke to the reality.

+++

Forty-seven paces dead north. Fourteen stairs down. Ten paces northwest. Seventeen stairs down. The stone steps are hollowed with age, his heels sinking into shallow puddles of damp. He can feel the weight of water growing on the air and stone as he moves further into the earth.

He maps it all out in his head as he moves, that easy instinct of decades of practice. Studies the cut of the stones, the age-softened curl of Mithraic reliefs engraved into the walls. It's all Roman; likely late imperial.

The man before him carries a brass oil lamp, the warm light dripping down the mask obscuring his face whenever he turns to assure himself that James is still just behind. The mask is hammered silver pierced through only by the shadowed slits of eyes and mouth and nostrils. The engraved expression is inscrutable.

 _Something on the edge of sleep,_ James thinks.

It looks impressive, but accomplishes little. James wouldn’t have entered here without knowing that the man behind that mask is a middle-aged banker from Glasgow. His name is Paul Sheffield, and he’s a devout Catholic, according to his above-ground habits.

All of this is just set dressing, adapted to their needs.

His guide comes to a stop. He indicates a small, dark pool of water cut into the stone and says, “As I do,” in his neatly-laced English. He dips his shoes carefully, coating each sole in a thin film of stagnant water.

James follows the example, feeling the stone slide beneath his loafers as he steps back again.

Many and many have walked through here.

There’s much he isn’t aware of. A name, for one: he’s found references to this cult as far back as the Spiritualist movements of the 1800s, but across his searches he’s found a dozen names in a dozen languages.

The most prominent thread he’s found is the _Dormiens_ andthe _Vigili._ The Sleeping and the Waking, alternating throughout the hodgepodge personal letters and diaries he’s scraped together over the years. Establishing a guess on their overall membership numbers has been impossible, but as he steps across the stone, feels how polished smooth and worn it is: he suspects far more than he expected.

“And this,” Sheffield says.

He stands before a shallow alcove in the stone, a place of offering. He removes a small silver flask from the upraised hand of a human figurine. It’s engraved with the likeness of an old fountain: a god’s mouth, open to pour.

James watches the man carefully as he tips the flask to pour through the slit mouth of his mask. Watches to assure his guide does in fact drink, and he does. Then he presents the flask to him.

He withholds a sigh. _Cults._

It’s water. He tastes as much by touching his tongue to the lip of the flask. There’s a metallic edge to it, but nothing bitter.

There’s little to be done. His guide watches him, motionless. He takes as small a sip as he can manage, exaggerating the bob of his adam’s apple for effect.

 _“Dormiens et vigili,_ ” the man intones with a gravelly tone, and waits, the dark shadows of that mask turned expectantly James’ way. Nothing but the pale glint of sclera visible in the dim.

“Dormiens et vigili,” James answers in kind.

The mask turns away from him with a slow gravity.

(Behind an equally grave expression, James reminds himself that Paul Sheffield has four cats, one of which is named Cheddar.)

He follows, matching his guide’s measured processional step for step.

He’s bribed and talked his way towards this place for months. He’s professed an interest in everything this cult holds dear: cycles, rebirth, regeneration. Studied their language patterns, worked his way through their convoluted chain of command.

And here he stands, in their sacred place. Oil wicks flicker within wall sconces. Dark channels of water line the floor in intricate patterns, draining slowly away from a single point.

An archway of stone stacked on stone, backed in smoked glass. Water bubbles from between the stones like a spring, flowing down into the channels. A steady flow pours through the stone ceiling, replenishing the tank. They must’ve built the place beneath an aquifer.

James notes all this meticulously, because his mind shies from what lies past that arch.

A pale face, unshaven, crowned in dark hair. 

The immortal hangs suspended in dark waters.

He wonders what she would make of this, their leader - Andy. One of her own, pinned like this beneath glass.

And he _is_ one of their own, James suspects, he recognizes that face from some of the oldest evidence he has of them. Pictures from the dawn of proper photography. Collodion-on-glass negatives from the Civil War. The first hard record of them: the immortals. 

He hadn’t met this one before. He only met a trio: Joe, Nicky, Andy. Wasn’t entirely certain this one _was_ immortal, at first, because evidence of his travels with Andy's corps began in the 1860s and ended with an image at the 1901 World’s Fair. He did not look forty _years_ older, by James’ estimation, but the image was poor, and his face in particular blurred: at some critical moment, he had turned his head aside, mouth pulled low in a grimace.

Forty years. It seemed a reasonable time for a man’s lifespan, in the strange and violent company of three who did not age, did not die. Who sought out battlefield after battlefield, century after century.

Then he found these people.

_Dormiens et Vigili._ And the wondrous thing they claimed to have. 

The corpse hangs weightless, arms snared in chains to secure him in the water. He's dressed in a loose tunic, the decaying cloth only a gray shade of the color it used to be.

The skin beneath is pale, but largely flawless.

Sheffield kneels before the archway, replenishing the silver flask from the steady drip of water from the tank.

That metallic taste on his tongue redoubles.

“One was lost,” Sheffield says as he steps back, still in that absurd put-upon cadence. James is closer than ever to seizing his shoulder, giving him a firm shake: looking for the small, insignificant man under all this pageantry. Looking for _sanity,_ because this—

This is far from sane.

“Something that didn’t - _couldn’t_ \- die, locked into iron, buried at sea," Sheffield continues. "But another was found.”

He caps the flask, rises to his feet. The mask turns up towards the waiting dead god. And then he speaks almost casually: “You have to wonder what he dreams of, don’t you? Inbetween.”

Something recoils in him. Hearing a question he’s asked a hundred times, echoed and warped by that inhuman gilded mask.

“Here you go,” Paul says, excitement staining his voice. His attention is on a small wheel set into the archway: it shifts, drip by drip, a rudimentary water clock.

James stares, and all pretense falls away.

He is staring at a stranger: a stranger that could be asleep, lips slightly parted - if not for the edge of unfocused eyes beneath half-closed lids, or the stillness of his chest beneath the decaying fabric of the tunic they’d dressed him in.

Was he hung here as a god, or a sacrifice? Was he awake, the first time they flooded the chamber?

Did he fight?

Does it matter?

“Now you’ll witness a wonder,” the silvered mask says to its upturned reflection.

And the drowned man opens his eyes, and breathes.

There was a moment, a long moment, where James thought she would simply wake.

The hand in his was still warm, after all. Even if he knew that there was no pulse beneath the velvet-soft skin over her inner wrist. Even if he knew that she was too heavy, now, too heavy by far for him to ever lift. He couldn’t even free his hand from the weight of her fingers. He couldn’t even will himself to step away.

She was still warm, for so very long.

So close to living.

The immortal breathes.

Water does not rush into his lungs because the water never left. His throat spasms. His chest hitches. He snaps his teeth together in a snarled grimace.

But the eyes.

Wide and unfocused, at first. Then narrowing, staring at the silvered mask, at James, as his mouth falls open again, throat working in a mimicry of gasping breath.

He never looks panicked. Never afraid.

Weary.

Unsurprised.

And then he subsides, nostrils flaring as he spasms against the chains holding him to this relentless cycle.

Life, and death, and life again.

The water clock winds away. Fifteen minutes, James estimates. Five minutes to drown again. Ten to wake.

"How long has he been here?" James asks.

"A century and more," Sheffield replies.

James nods.

The immortal stares down at him. Unimpressed, no doubt, by one more in a line of hundreds. His eyes fall shut.

It’s wonderful what you can hide from an ill-trained cultist. Paul had barely patted him down at all. He certainly didn’t find the gun obscured within the padded lining of his jacket. It’s a matter of milliseconds to draw the gun, aim, and fire. By the time Sheffield reacts, it’s only to clap his hands to his ears, deafened by the sharp retort in such a small place.

The stones ring with the aftermath. The spiderweb of fractures lacing the glass shift, groan. Water bleeds from the network of lines before the structure at last crumples, sending a cascade of water rushing around their legs.

The dying man hangs slack in the chains.

“What—” Sheffield begins.

“Sit. Down,” James orders, rapping the gun barrel hard against the metal of the mask. The man drops to his knees, hands clasped tight around that flask of dead man’s water like it will offer some vague protection from a bullet through the skull.

James hurries up through the slackening flood of water, kicking aside the lingering fangs of glass jutting from the floor. The man is still shaking, trembling, water spilling from an open mouth. Drowning in open air.

He fumbles with the chain, feels the man’s shuddering and twisting go slack. He slams a fist into the immortal’s chest, to little effect. The man simply rocks with the motion, ribs hitching in small, ineffective twitches. That tenuous logic of _he’ll revive again, what does it matter?_ holds nothing to a lifetime of rationalism.

He’s _right here_ , he needn’t die—

The hook of one chain finally releases from the burnished loop embedded in the rock, and the man sags forward. James plants a shoulder against his chest to keep him up - above the jagged glass - as he reaches for the chain binding his right arm and frees it.

Iron chain slithers to the stone floor, and the man’s dead weight falls against him. James staggers back, laying him flat in the pooling water: staring at half-lidded eyes, a stagnant chest.

One last death.

James shuts his eyes tight, reaching for calm. Ten minutes. That gives him time to carry the man back up to the cars.

“What have you done?” Sheffield asks again.

He replies cordially enough, nearly conversational: "You will remain here." He picks a chain up out of the pooling water, dragging it across the stone.

That silvered mask stares dumbly up at him. It's the work of only a minute to bind Sheffield's arms to his sides, settle him comfortably into the puddled grooves in the floor. 

Last of all, he pries free the flask still clasped in the man's pale hands, unscrews the top, and upends it onto the flooded floor. 

"You, I, you can't—" Sheffield babbles, but he squeaks to a stop as the barrel of the gun turns his way again. James likes to think that absurd mask has taken on a slightly dumbfounded look.

"Silence, now," he says, holstering the gun and pocketing the flask. "Some contemplation, I think Long overdue."

He picks up the corpse. Still warm. Will never have time to cool, he suspects.

It's slow going with the man slung over his shoulders. He places each foot carefully on the damp stone.

There'd been a scribble on the back of that 1901 print: ` _Andy, Ys., Nic, Bkr.`_

Andy, of course. Joe, perhaps a Yusef or Yusuf at the time. Nicolo, the Italian. And this man, the fourth, who could never quite hold a camera’s gaze.

Bkr. 

Booker, he thinks. That’s his best guess.

He’d been nothing more than an idea, until today. Hidden behind glass. Now he weighs heavy across his shoulders, that metallic springwater running in runnels down his spine.

They rise together, him and this drowned god. Carried on worn stone steps back into a more familiar sunlight.

James settles the immortal in the dirt, curled on his side in the recovery position. Two minutes remaining, according to his watch. He attempts to arrange the rather thin tunic in something approximating modesty. He’ll have to find him some proper clothes.

One more minute. He settles down in a kneel, elbows on his knees, and blinks up at a warm summer sky. The trees sway, oblivious to the little pocket of Hell they stand above. 

The man shifts, abruptly. His bare heel kicks out, carving an arc in the dirt. He chokes and splays a hand out to grasp blindly at the dirt as he twists his head that way. His fingers dig damp scars in the fine silt as he coughs, and writhes, and at last ejects mouthful after mouthful of water. 

He coughs, and chokes. But he chokes on air, and his eyes widen in a painful incomprehension.

Finally, the choking subsides, and James watches as this impossible human takes his first breath in a century. The immortal inhales long, presses his damp forehead into the dirt and _screams._ A long, low cry that shivers apart long before that deep lungful has been extinguished.

He breathes in long, greedy draughts. 

James waits.

When the man finally blinks up at him, his gaze dulled with shock, he says, “Hello. Booker, is it?”

The man answers with something quite rude, in French. Roughly: ‘ _Get fucked.’_

James doesn’t know whether to take that as a yes or a no, but it’s ultimately inconsequential: the immortal rolls onto his back, blinks up at the cirrus-laced blue of the sky, and lapses out of consciousness.

He reaches for the man’s wrist. Warm.

Feels the steady one-two of a heartbeat, tapping away.

 _You do have to wonder,_ he thinks. 

Aloud, he murmurs, “We’ll stick with Booker, for now.” Then he drags the immortal’s limp arm up over his shoulder and levers him into the backseat of his car. He binds his hands and legs, should he prove violent on waking. 

The mineral stink of the groundwater clings to them both, lingering heavy in the stifling interior.

James rolls the windows down. Lets fresh air roll across them, chase the last of that clinging damp away. 

+++

He opens his eyes slow.

Breathes through his nose. Exhales.

He still tastes metal on the back of his tongue. If he closes his eyes, the water will rise again, he is sure of it.

So he keeps his eyes open. Stares at the strange blur of green-blue. Trees passing overhead, too fast. A dream of flight, he thinks. He will hold to this one. Stay as long as he can.

He breathes through his nose.

Exhales.

He dreams, and dreams, and dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> If Booker doesn't use his first breath in a century to tell Copley to go fuck himself, is he really living?
> 
> Coming up next: Quynh and Booker bonding over the misogynistic nonsense that is her getting dumped in the ocean as a witch and him getting trussed up as a god.


End file.
